The Trap of Hope
by Ms.MaraJade
Summary: Anne of Spain has been married for a number of years to Louis of France, and every attempt to bear a child ends the same. More of a reflective piece on the broken heart of a woman yearning to be a mother, and who is consistently forced to cope with the disappointment of remaining childless.


_Author's Notes_ : Thanks to modern technology, women have basal thermometers, home pregnancy tests, and a number of other scientific means to monitor the changes to their bodies. In the days before modern science and medicine, many women could not confirm that they were pregnant until the first kick of the baby (aka the "Quickening"). However, I thought it an interesting concept to consider if a woman of means, like Anne, would have tracked her body's cycles and how she would have done so without modern equipment and scientific knowledge. *On a side topic to this, I have included further notes at the end of the story.

 _Disclaimer_ : I do not own "The Musketeers" in any capacity with the exception of the books written by Alexandre Dumas from where these characters were inspired. There is no money made from this hobby, but that does not stop my imagination from conjuring up new stories.

 _Summary_ : Anne of Spain has been married for a number of years to Louis of France, and every attempt to bear a child ends the same. More of a reflective piece on the broken heart of a woman yearning to be a mother, and who is consistently forced to cope with the disappointment of remaining childless.

 **The Trap of Hope**

The visible sliver of dawn was breaking through the distance of the nightly landscape, and she tossed in bed again, still unable to fully get the rest she was so certain she needed. Her right hand pressed gently upon her belly, the daydreams of hope filling her head with images. Her left hand rested against her side on the plush bundle of a mattress and closed tightly into a fist, her breath coming in a sharp inhale, warning herself to not get ahead of the current moment. She was within the latter end of the same waiting period that she endured every rotation, and while part of her fell into this trap of hope every month, the other part of her that was logical and grounded in facts warned her to be cautious again.

Sitting up, the young queen's eyes looked to the window that beckoned the morning's prompt rise of the sun. The sliver had broken the night into a large wedge, and the early curve of the sun was on the horizon. Daylight was advancing on the dark shadows that filled her room earlier, pushing the night into the corners from where it came. Another ray of hope struck her as the single, lone sunbeam invaded her private apartments, giving her imagination reason to play on the idea of a miracle taking place before her.

She fell back against the pillows, knowing that staying here would keep the hope and the dream alive, and she took in the sensations that rolled across her body. However, she also wanted to end the agony of the unknown, and the only way to do that was to begin her morning routine, where she would maintain her vigilance for the clues of what would or would not come. And, if today's inspections provided no evidence, then her hope would build just a little more, and tomorrow morning would give her another opportunity to perform the same routine.

Pushing the blankets off to the side, Anne of Spain, who had become the Queen of France upon her marriage to Louis XIII, was greeted with the early morning chill for a brief moment, but her body quickly adjusted to the temperature of the room. It was barely the start of the autumn season, and the coolness of daybreak would only last until the sun had broken free over the horizon. In an hour, it would be warm and temperate outside again, her upstairs chambers in the palace growing overly warm by mid-day.

She stood from the bed and moved towards her faithful full-length mirror, the one object that had no capability to tell lies about her appearance. Anne pulled her nightgown over her head, dropping the clothing onto the sitting chair nearby. She stood before the mirror, standing in the barest of clothing, her long, light-brown hair covering her as it draped over her shoulders and down towards her stomach. She began this routine with scrutinizing over every inch of her face. Her blue eyes were shaded in gray, weary with a heaviness around them that she had grown resourceful to hide by using a light-colored powder that she had secretly brought with her in a trunk from her home in Spain. She wouldn't even let her maids know about the light-colored powder, as it was her one contraband from her native country, and it was the one thing that concealed the sad woman beneath the royal mask.

Shaking away the thoughts of her concealing powder, Anne would use it just before she called her maids in to help her get dressed, as no one needed to see the Queen of France looking less than majestic. However, before she dared be interrupted, she had her inspection to complete, and as she moved her hair aside, her eyes looked thoroughly over the curves of her body, studying herself closely for any changes. She wondered how much she was imagining, and again in those late hours of night, she had tossed and turned as her body gave her indications of what she only hoped to bear. Her abdomen had felt like it was tight, and the dull ache that accompanied it brought her once more the slightest twinge of hope. Even her breasts had felt different, the same kind of soreness that she had experienced the month prior, but yet with a change that she could not quite place.

She ran her hand across her belly, imagining and hoping yet again. The dull ache continued from the night before, the one that had her sleep interrupted with more hopes and dreams. It seemed that the one responsibility of a woman's body that was supposed to be the sole reason for existing was taking longer than normal for her, and she had learned to keep a secret diary of the days and weeks between each time this phase arrived, looking for the slightest sign of life.

Anne opened the journal on the desk and looked to the notes she had made from the previous month, her elegant handwriting so full of hope. It was the same symptoms, the same wishes, and all those weeks ago, it had ended the same as every month prior.

She closed the journal and rested her hand gently upon the leather cover dyed in hunter green, her fingers absently tracing the grooves in the hide that was used. She had kept this journal hidden and secret, as no one needed to know that the Queen of France kept a detailed, monthly account of her body's changes in addition to her dashed hopes and broken dreams. She was two days later now than she was last month, and as that dull ache continued, she felt the need to use her chamber pot.

She always regretted this simple action that so many others took for granted, and as she used the pot, she had to continually force herself to think only of positive thoughts. She wanted to keep the hope alive, as it was the sole thread that allowed her the sanity of knowing she was a capable woman. It was the simplest expectation of a woman's body, and yet it had eluded her time and again. Every month that she was denied this miracle, it made her feel less adequate and wondering what was wrong with her. Anne's midwives had told her that her body cycled through normally, but none of them had any capability to see if there was something wrong inside her. She wondered about the possibility of disease rotting her from the inside out, stealing every bit of the life she tried to create, and using the essence of those unborn seeds for its own destructive means to obliterate her confidence and her dreams.

Closing her eyes, Anne prayed for a long moment in the ways she had been taught and told herself to stop with the nonsense thoughts. She knew that negativity would only bring about the next disaster, and she needed to keep positive, holding that one thread of hope. She thought of the way such a small life would feel within her belly, its movements and kicks bringing her a joy she had only known once before, in the early months of her pregnancy prior to that child's life ending prematurely in disaster.

Pushing aside the sadness of that lost child, Anne tried instead to imagine what a baby in her arms would feel like as it smiled and cooed up at her. When she opened her eyes and dared to look into her chamber pot, her hope was shattered into millions of pieces once again, and she felt that familiar lump return in her throat to consume her. She was not fully in the throes of her womanly cleansing yet, but there was enough of a familiar discoloration in the chamber pot that she knew the death of her hopes was inevitable once again.

Anne brought a hand to her still-empty womb and leaned forward, feeling the length of her long hair fall to the sides of her face and conceal her shame. Her face burned with regret and heartache, her eyes swelling with tears, and as she stood in this most naked and vulnerable of moments, she had failed again at motherhood.

For so long, she had experienced the treachery of seeing the swollen bellies of other women and being forced to offer joy for those women. Sometimes her joy for them was genuine, but for others it was false, another mask Anne had learned to wear well. She knew that some of those women were truly happy with their announcements and their expected children, but she despised the ones who took their children and their growing wombs for granted. The feeling of betrayal struck her hard, and she could not understand why God would deny her the ability to have a baby when she so desperately wanted to give her child nothing but a good life full of love and compassion.

Putting her hand to her mouth to cover the sob that dared to break free, Anne mentally counted the five attempts she and Louis had made in nearly as many weeks, and now she knew that each of those attempts had been without success. She wanted to know what else could possibly be expected of her when she had endured her husband and his lack of interest in their intimacy. His interactions with her were duty-driven, his touch labored, and if she dared say that she was uncomfortable, he would take personal affront at her complaints, daring to walk away with the threat that they would simply have to try again when she would be more accommodating for him. Her husband's intimacies were predictable and calculated, his touch methodical and lacking any kind of passion or love, making every attempt for a child a chore for both of them.

Biting her lip, Anne no longer wanted to dwell on her boudoir dilemmas, as she realized now that she was far too heart-broken today to deal with the conniving of court, and instead of getting dressed formally, she returned the nightgown to her body. She would inform her maids of her needs, just as she had done last month and have them relay to the king that she was feeling ill and wanted a few days alone. She took from the drawer the cloth that had been reserved for such womanly necessity, and she tucked it discretely, where it would absorb the ruins of her childless womb, knowing that over the next few days, her latest bout of infertility would wash away her hopes again.

Anne now settled herself at her desk and opened the journal to a fresh page, the blank parchment before her that had been awaiting news of her hope. Instead, she had to write down the inevitable heartbreak of her continued failure. It was another month that would not herald the announcement of a royal baby. She was certain that the entire court had been keeping count of her weeks as much as she had. She knew that when she showed herself again in court, there would be a mix of sympathy and disdain. She would see on their faces that they were all trying to diagnose what was wrong with the Spanish Queen, and why she could not give the King of France his heir.

Feeling the warmth of another tear trailing down her cheek, Anne brushed it aside hastily. For as much as she had her suspicions, she couldn't dare think that there was something wrong with her royal husband. Such thoughts were considered treason, and certainly she had never heard of any king in history ever being accused of bearing the taboo of infertility. Without a doubt, it was her fault, as the only possibility of being infertile could be none other than a woman's. Anne had to be barren, diseased, or broken in some way that so many other women appeared not to be.

With a shaky hand, Anne wrote down her observations from the darkness of the night with its budding possibilities of hope. Then, she began writing about the morning and the way it had shattered her dreams. Her throat tightened with every scratch and movement of the ink-dipped quill, and when the journal became nothing but a blur before her, she laid the quill on the desk for a moment to cry once more.

She was a failure as a woman and could not perform the most primal of duties that her body had been designed to do. She no longer wanted to think about how long she had been married and how many times she had endured those nights without passion. She covered another sob, doing her best to keep quiet from her servants that she knew were just awaiting her orders to enter her chamber, as the memory of her lost baby brought another wave of emotional agony. She was so certain that time, so happy and grateful that she was going to be a good wife and provide the heirs that France needed. But, after that baby's tragic loss, she had borne no others, and it was what had prompted her to track the monthly accounts of her body's patterns. Even this journal that she meticulously kept had provided her with no evidence that would ensure she had done everything right.

Taking a heavy breath, Anne wiped the tears away for a final time and would not allow any more regarding this latest failure for the remainder of the weeks to come. She was still the Queen of France, and she needed to hold her head high. Weakness would be sniffed out and used against her, and even if she could not bear heirs for her husband's crown, she would maintain her dignity in front of him and the others at court. She would not let their gossip harm her, for she had done more than enough damage to herself with her own accusations, and she was so full of emotional scar tissue from her own torment that she could no longer even feel the insults of others.

Putting the journal back into its hidden place in the desk, Anne then moved to the trunk in her closet where she kept her secret containers of the powder from her home country. Pulling out a small compact, she returned to her mirror. Her red-rimmed eyes showed those dark circles of regret and exhaustion, and she did not hesitate as she brushed her fingers over the lightly tinted powder in the compact. She caressed it carefully into those deep areas beneath her eyes that bore all the pain and regret. She applied very thin layers, blending the edges into her skin to hide the raw ache that caused the lack of sleep and the lack of joy.

Taking a deep breath, Anne again lifted her head high as she studied herself in the mirror and saw the dignified woman who was a rightful queen. Even in her nightgown, she was now poised and graceful, her strength shining through as the broken woman who could not bear children was buried once again. She put her powder back in its secreted place, and she returned to her chair at her desk. It was time to call her maids and have them dress her in the formal gowns that signified her rank in this palace. She was Anne of Spain, wife to Louis, and above all she was the Queen of France. Her secret ritual of feeling sorry for herself was done, and it was time for her to let the new spark of hope begin to ignite and have faith that next month's journal would hold a different ending.

 _*Author's Additional Notes_ : I felt I needed to write this one-shot for my own kind of therapy, especially when I learned that October is Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month. I'm nearly 43-years-old, and I know my odds of having another child are dwindling with each month that passes. Thankfully, I was blessed with a healthy son ten years ago, and the closest I had ever come to giving him a sibling was a 7-week miscarriage when my son was about three-years-old. When Anne told Aramis in _Knight Takes Queen_ , "Six years. I've never forgotten that child, not for a single day," it was the one line in the series that struck me hardest. I wonder every day who my child would have been if I didn't lose him or her, and I sympathized with the character of Queen Anne in her plight for a healthy pregnancy ever since that moment.


End file.
